Commentary on the open-air situation room:

“Now you’ve got some pretty good pictures — the prime minister of Japan, and the president.”

That’s President Trump, crashing a wedding party at his Mar-a-Lago club on Saturday night, immediately after holding a news conference with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan to address North Korea’s firing of a missile, which flew 310 miles before dropping into the Sea of Japan. The news conference took place after Mr. Trump held a meeting with Mr. Abe and their entourages out in the open in the club dining terrace, examining documents and talking on a commercial cellphone as guests drifted by and took photos, servers reached over the papers to deposit the entree, and Mike Flynn, his national security adviser, held up his phone, on flashlight setting, so everybody could get a good look.

Mike Flynn did that – that’s a new item (to me). He’s military…wouldn’t you think he’d be just a little security conscious? After all those years?

It apparently never occurred to Mr. Trump, Mr. Flynn or Steve Bannon, another member of the National Security Council, who also trained his cellphone on the paperwork, that holding a cellphone camera over these documents might allow foreign adversaries and hackers to get “some pretty good pictures,” too. Cellphones aren’t allowed even in secured areas of the White House. Yet there they all were, playing Situation Room in the open air, for a random crowd in Palm Beach, Fla.

Well Trump removed most of the adults from the National Security Council…but still. I would have expected basic precautions. Silly me.

Mr. Trump’s big weekend generated lots of Facebook and Twitter posts: the president holding a young woman around the waist, flashing a lecherous thumbs-up; vamping with a bevy of fuchsia-clad bridesmaids; posing in his golf togs with another group of women. And then there’s the video of his wedding “toast” to the happy couple. Of course, the wedding was of the son of a big-dollar political donor, a longtime Mar-a-Lago member who, Mr. Trump said, has “paid me a fortune,” according to CNN.

One must wonder how Rick, Mr. Abe or his diplomatic entourage felt as they were dragged like pull toys through Mr. Trump’s club, props in his bizarre and potentially dangerous effort to show off.

Disgusted and bewildered, is my guess.

One would think leadership of the free world would have scratched Mr. Trump’s itch for publicity. But this is the man who called reporters using a fake name to generate stories about himself; who introduced a member of one of his clubs to a Golf Digest reporter as “the richest guy in Germany,” instead of by name; who looks pained when having to share the podium with anyone, from Sarah Palin to the prime minister of Canada. This is rule by Al Czervik, Rodney Dangerfield’s character in “Caddyshack”: a reckless, clownish boor surrounded by sycophants, determined to blow up all convention. But this is real life, and every time Mr. Trump strikes a pose, the rest of the world holds its breath.

Oh well – it’s only nukes.

Before he put his nasty hands all over Trudeau, Donnie from Queens told us what they would be chatting about.

Today I will meet with Canadian PM Trudeau and a group of leading business women to discuss women in the workforce. https://t.co/bFAHPRXHdP

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 13, 2017

Can you imagine? Talking about women in the workforce with the guy who bragged about being able to grab women by the pussy because he’s a star? Can you imagine?

Oh god, poor Justin Trudeau.

Welcome to the @WhiteHouse Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau! pic.twitter.com/WKgF8Zo9ri

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 13, 2017

Ew ew ew right up in his face, and the nasty little hands all over him. Ew.

Trump still watches lots of tv, and no matter how often his people tell him it’s not a great idea, he goes on watching. I suspect he has to – I suspect it’s his life source. Not watching, for him, would be like a vampire seeing direct sunlight. He would fade fade fade fade pop – gone.

In the heat of the 2016 campaign, “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd asked Donald Trump whom he spoke to for military advice.

“Well, I watch the shows,” Trump responded. “I mean, I really see a lot of great — you know, when you watch your show and all of the other shows, and you have the generals.”

“I watch the shows.”

It’s where he gets his material.

Take this example from Sunday morning. At 6:25 a.m., Fox News showed a graphic claiming that 72 percent of all refugees admitted into the United States since Trump’s travel ban was put on ice by the courts hail from the seven countries that were on the no-admittance list of the executive order. Thirty minutes later, Trump tweeted: “72% of refugees admitted into U.S. (2/3 -2/11) during COURT BREAKDOWN are from 7 countries: SYRIA, IRAQ, SOMALIA, IRAN, SUDAN, LIBYA & YEMEN.” (Thanks to CNN’s Brian Stelter for documenting it!)

That’s the only one I blogged about today. I didn’t realize he’d gotten his “facts” from Fox News. Like a fool, I assumed he was looking at some special government source.

In fact, it has become something of a cottage industry to try to link Trump’s early-morning tweets to something he has seen on television in the very recent past. An Associated Press article this past week detailed Trump’s difficult transition to the White House and included this remarkable paragraph.

“The president’s advisers have tried to curb his cable news consumption during the workday. But there are no limits when the president returns to the residence. During another recent telephone conversation, Trump briefly put down the phone so he could turn up the volume on a CNN report. When he returned to the call, he was complaining about ‘fake news.’ ”

Angela Merkel? Malcolm Turnbull? Theresa May? “Hang on for a sec, I wanna hear this…FAKE NEWS.”

Bernie Sanders today mentioned that Trump’s pants are on fire. Al Franken suggested he’s a hot dog short of a picnic.

Sanders made the charge on NBC’s “Meet the Press” as he attacked Trump’s travel ban — which faces a federal court challenge — and Republican plans to revamp the Affordable Care Act.

“We have a president who is delusional in many respects, a pathological liar,” Sanders said.

“Those are strong words,” moderator Chuck Todd interjected while asking Sanders whether he can work with a liar.

Yes of course they’re strong words, but seeing as how they’re obviously true, since Trump barfs out blatant lies on Twitter daily, so what if they’re strong words? Why should we tiptoe around the truth while Trump lies himself blue? Why is the onus on everyone else instead of on him? It’s not our duty to use a euphemism, it’s his duty to stop lying.

“It makes life very difficult. It is very harsh, but I think that’s the truth,” Sanders replied. “When somebody goes before you and says that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally … nobody believes that. There is not a scintilla of evidence to believe that, what would you call that remark? It’s a lie. It’s a delusion.”

Well, lie and delusion aren’t the same thing. But a head of state has a responsibility not to blurt out whatever pops into his head or whatever he reads on some deranged alt-right blog. Trump’s total lack of responsibility makes his delusions into lies. He has no right to assume they’re true without doing any work to see if they are or not. He has no right to say things that people have repeatedly told him have no evidence to back them up.

Franken first raised questions about the president’s mental health Friday night on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” saying Republican senators privately express “great concern” about Trump’s temperament. The senator doubled down Sunday morning, telling CNN’s “State of the Union” that “a few” Republican senators feel that way.

“In the way that we all have this suspicion that — you know, that he’s not — he lies a lot, he says things that aren’t true, that’s the same thing as lying, I guess,” Franken told moderator Jake Tapper, mentioning the president’s repeatedly false claims of voter fraud.

“You know, that is not the norm, uh, for a president of the United States or, actually, for a human being,” Franken said.

Exactly. It’s not for a human being, and especially not for a president. A president’s lies can make things happen, and they can be very bad things. Gulf of Tonkin. Japanese internments.

Elsewhere, Democratic lawmakers called for investigations into White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who last week used a national television interview to encourage viewers to buy items from a clothing line designed by Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter. The comments appeared to violate a key ethics rule barring federal employees from using their public office to endorse products.

Hours after Conway’s interview, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee called on the Office of Government Ethics to recommend discipline, given that Trump, who is Conway’s “agency head,” holds an “inherent conflict of interest” because of the involvement of his daughter’s business.

Conway’s comments were “a textbook case of a violation of the law,” Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the committee’s top Democrat, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

“You cannot go out there as an employee of the government and advertise for Ivanka Trump or anyone else, their products. You can’t do that. And anybody else would be subject to a minimum, probably, of a reprimand, or they could literally lose their job over this,” he said.

Cummings added that Conway’s promotional message was “very blatant” and “intentional,” and said the Office of Government Ethics should “take a thorough look” at the situation before recommending a potential punishment.

It was as blatant as it would be possible to be – telling the people in tv land to buy Ivanka’s trash.

Trump and his puppets are still telling lies about voter fraud.

White House adviser Stephen Miller doubled down on the Trump administration’s groundless claims of voter fraud in New Hampshire — and across the nation — during in an interview on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.

Earlier this week President Trump claimed, with no evidence, that voters from Massachusetts were bused to New Hampshire to vote illegally.

That’s not a thing you just do – it’s not normal. It’s Hitlery. It’s what aspiring dictators do – they announce the whole thing is broken and corrupt and Only They can fix it.

On This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Miller, a senior White House policy adviser, to provide that evidence. In fact, he asked three times.

Miller said the show was “not the venue” to supply evidence, but repeated the baseless claim multiple times. He said in part:

“I can tell you that this issue of busing voters into New Hampshire is widely known by anyone who’s worked in New Hampshire politics. It’s very real. It’s very serious.”

New Hampshire’s secretary of state has said there is no proof of buses appearing at polling places, and that a large number of voters arriving like that would have attracted attention.

The New Hampshire voting fraud claims are a variant on a frequently repeated Trump claim of nationwide voter fraud — which is also unfounded.

It’s a red flag. It’s one of many, which makes it hard to focus on all of them, but that is what it is – he’s calling various elections fraudulent. That’s dictator territory.

It’s possible that he doesn’t even realize that, because he doesn’t realize much, but we can be sure Bannon does.

But Miller stood by those claims too, saying in part:

“The White House has provided enormous evidence with respect to voter fraud, with respect to people being registered in more than one state, dead people voting, noncitizens being registered to vote. … I’m prepared to go on any show, anywhere, anytime, and repeat it and say the President of the United States is correct 100 percent.”

The White House has not provided “enormous evidence” of massive nationwide voter fraud.

So, Miller lied.

The Times kindly collected their neighbors’ Trump-related segments in one article. Go New Yawk.

Rejoice therefore: there’s more Spicer.

He doesn’t get it.

72% of refugees admitted into U.S. (2/3 -2/11) during COURT BREAKDOWN are from 7 countries: SYRIA, IRAQ, SOMALIA, IRAN, SUDAN, LIBYA & YEMEN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2017

That’s because they are refugees. Refugees don’t come from Sweden and Canada and Japan.

Let’s consult the UNHCR on this point.

A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries.

Things are a little bit tough in Syria right now. That’s why there’s a Syrian refugee crisis. That’s why Syrians are a high proportion of refugees.

Albert Burneko translates Politico’s somewhat tactful language about Trump’s surprise and distress about realizing being president is a hard job into language that is less tactful and more honest.

“Being president is harder than Donald Trump thought,” begins the article, neatly capturing the blithe, criminal ignorance that characterizes both Trump himself and the many dozens of millions of morons who thought he should be the leader of the free world.

Exactly what I thought. How could he not know it’s a hard job? How dare he go for it without knowing? How dare he be so reckless and so lazy and so entitled?

Our new president occupies a wild outer range of blundering, arrogant stupidity, far beyond that typically euphemized in newspaper-ese, and the effort to describe the former truthfully and accurately—but without using such frank and impolite words as “stupid” and “ignoramus” and “spray-tanned fart balloon”—very nearly breaks the latter.

It’s one of the joys of blogging, that you don’t have to euphemize such things if you don’t choose to.

I love this article so much. Nearly every sentence contains some marvel of delicacy. The new president “often asks simple questions about policies, proposals and personnel.” When confronted with details, he “has been known to quickly change the subject” or direct questions to one of his chief advisers. His aides “joke that they wish their boss would spend more time at his Mar-A-Lago estate.” How many ways can you avoid saying that the president is a bumbling, pillow-fisted shit-for-brains, in a story about that exact fact?

Here’s the most incredible example. We learn that after unflattering details (what other kind could there be? He’s Donald Trump!) of his phone conversations with other foreign leaders were leaked to the press, Trump grew paranoid about National Security Council staffers and launched an investigation into the source of the leaks. We also learn this (emphasis added):

In turn, some NSC staff believe Trump does not possess the capacity for detail and nuance required to handle the sensitive issues discussed on the calls, and that he has politicized their agency by appointing chief strategist Bannon to the council.

The President of the United States of America is too stupid to participate in discussions held expressly for his benefit. That is what “some NSC staff” have said, here. Talking to him is a waste of time, because he’s literally incapable of grasping what is being talked about, and he just gets mad, like a baby. Like a big red baby with a sensitive heinie.

It’s a doozy all right. Oh, he lacks the capacity for detail and nuance? Yet he’s the president? Oh. Uh…oops.